Sure! I don't know much about kernels though.
Do I have to use a slacko live CD or is there another way to test?

if you've got usb drive that is easier without having to use up media, you can use Puppy Universal Installer (usually in the setup menu). Download the ISO image first._________________helping Wiki for help | IF SendSpace link = "dead" THEN PM me ("up file to http://meownplanet.net/")

I have a directory called /var/lib/alsa/ but it's empty, is it normal?

Hmm, I booted up into my MacPUP 529 frugal install. My /var/lib/alsa directory is empty also. So I guess that is normal. I went ahead and mounted in pmount my Semplice and AntiX installs and looked at /var/lib/alsa directories also.

They were empty. This is on my IBM M41 Desktop Dual ide hard drive quad booter test box instead of my eeepc. I don't know why though I have stuff inside of my eeepc /var/lib/alsa directory though and not in this IBM with the same AntiX distro, Must be a hardware thing I guess. I have no mic plugged in though on this Desktop when I boot a kernel though.

Like I said. I was not sure my fixes would apply to your BenQ or would help or not. I have a

That doesn't seem like a logical place for the microphone gain control, but that's how it is sometimes. So it might be useful to take another look at the Playback view. Remember that if you see little > symbols in the right margin of an alsamixer view (as in the above images), there are more controls off to the right, and you need to use your right arrow key to bring them into the view.

If you don't find the mic gain there, let's see just what controls you do have by running this command:

Oh maybe this is interesting, the previous owner of this benq laptop told me that when he got it with windows XP he still had to install some drivers to have the sound working..
I don't know how it works with puppy though, can you use drivers that i guess are created for winXP?

I don't see anything unusual in your text output from amixer. There seem to be no controls related to the microphone input or capture that you didn't already see in alsamixer, and the controls seem to all be set appropriately. So no clues there.

I found an alsa-info.sh report on your make and model (although "S53", not "S53W"): alsa-info: BenQ Joybook S53 But I found no clues there either.

The latter of the above-mentioned posts mentions a certain symptom: changing the Surround slider also changes the Mic slider. Does this happen for you? If so, it would show beyond doubt that this problem was certainly a bug, and not a configuration problem.

jojonouvo wrote:

. . . can you use drivers that i guess are created for winXP?

Although its fairly common to use network drivers designed for Windows with Linux, I am not aware of anyone doing something similar with sound drivers. Of course, anything is possible, but I suspect that it would be a very long road.

jojonouvo wrote:

Or what if I use a different version of alsa? Or something else (jack, oss)?

I don't believe that JACK will talk to the hardware. As far as I know it only talks to OSS, or ALSA (or FFADO for FireWire hardware).

OSS is a possibility, but I'm not sure where you would look for a binary compatible with your kernel.

Although you can get the source code (OSS source download site)and compile it yourself, be aware that a prebuilt binary of OSS from 4Front Technologies is commercial software, with a commercial license. If you want to use it for more than one year, or if you want any support from them, you need to send 4Front Technologies 30 USD. Also, they don't list the 3.x.x Linux kernels. Perhaps their build for 2.6 Linux kernels would work, but wouldn't they want to make that clear on their web site if that is the case?

As for a different version of ALSA, that too is a possibility, but I wouldn't hold my breath. If there is an ALSA bug, it is probably in the driver, and the ALSA drivers are part of the kernel. So a newer kernel is more likely to help than an newer ALSA package.

Taking a quick look at the kernel history for the snd-intel8x0 and snd-hda-intel drivers, I didn't see any recent fixes that seemed to apply to your case.

I did see this: ALSA: hda - Fix auto-mic detection in Conexant codec-parser, but that was way back on 2011-May-23. Slacko 5.3.3 includes that fix, since its kernel is 3.1.10 (2012-Jan-18 ), so you've already tried that (assuming that the Slacko you tried was Slacko 5.3.3 or newer -- you just said that you "booted from a slacko", so if it was an older one, you should try 5.3.3).

jojonouvo wrote:

Ok, I have also booted from a live ubuntu Mint distro. . .

What version of Mint? This makes it clear that this is not just a Puppy problem, but doesn't give us a clue about what ALSA or kernel versions were used. If it was Mint 12, it used the same ALSA version as Slacko 5.3.3 and an older kernel, so there would be no surprise that it failed. But if it was Mint 13, it has the newer ALSA 1.0.25, and the newer 3.2 kernel.

I did see this change, which is also an old one (2011-May-13), but verifies that using "model=auto", as recommended by darkcity, is a valid option: ALSA: hda - Add support of auto-parser to cxt5047 / CX20551 Waikiki. Looking at the source code I see that other "model=" options used with the cx20551 are "laptop", "laptop-hp", "laptop-eapd", and, if compiled with CONFIG_SND_DEBUG, "test". That doesn't mean that those options would work on your laptop, only that they work with some PC that also uses your sound chip. One of those models might be similar enough to your model to work with yours, or not. (If you decide to try them, remember to reboot after editing the file.) It is possible that the ALSA developers need to come up with another model option specifically designed for your PC.

It may be time for you to file a bug report with ALSA. But there is a bit of a problem. I've been trying to search ALSA's Bug Tracker for the past couple of days, to see if a similar bug has already been reported, but all I am getting are "Failed to Connect" messages from their server. Perhaps the server will be up again soon. One can only hope. (Does anyone know if that server is permanently dead?)

jojonuovo: what method are you using to assess whether or not the microphone is working? (are you watching vu meters needles or just listening for the recorded sound during playback?). I ask this because I had a lot of problems with Studio3.3 sound - it seemed to be because of the tight link with Jack. (I recommend you do your testing with Slacko and using mhwaveedit in record mode then if any useful answer is found, go back to try it on Studio 3.3). I had one crazy time where the mic did not seem to work unless I had headphones plugged into the headphone socket.

Also, one time I found that my mic controls were only properly displayed when I tabbed Alsamixer to show both Playback and Capture at the same time (ie: "ALL"). For some reason the individual Playback and Capture displays did not display all the mic controls. (Sorry I can't remember which version of alsa, or which puppy I had that problem with).

I don't have your model of laptop so can't really offer much help unfortunately. I just recommend doing your testing with some other fairly new puppies.

npierce, thanks a lot for collecting all the information!
The Slacko i tried was the latest as well as the mint 13.
I changed alsa.conf again but still no changes...

greengeek, I just listen to aplay and arecord to check the sound or with audacity. I checked now with your method with the same result.

Something to notice is that sound input is recognized using my guitar link usb interface, but i guess this is a different domain.

If I want to use the mic for skype, I seem to have 2 ways left:
- plugin a mic into the usb interface and routing the signal to skype through jack, oh but jack cannot see skype i think
- or using skype inside wine with the benq driver? I have no idea if you can do that?

Oh good. I was thinking that it might be quicker to get up and running if you purchased a USB sound card, but I hate to suggest that someone should buy more hardware if they already have working hardware, just because a software issue gets in the way. But if you already have a USB sound input device then you shouldn't need to buy anything.

jojonouvo wrote:

plugin a mic into the usb interface and routing the signal to skype through jack, oh but jack cannot see skype i think

I've never used JACK or Skype, so can't advise you on that. But I would think that you should be able to go straight to ALSA, without need of JACK.

With the guitar link connected, try this command to list capture devices:

Code:

arecord -l

Along with your built-in sound card, you should also see something like this:

Code:

card 1: default [USB Audio CODEC ], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]

If so, you should be able to go into alsamixer, press F6, and select your USB sound card. This will give you a different set of controls in the Playback and Capture screens.

I'm not sure how the output level of a guitar pickup compares to that of a microphone. If they aren't similar, the levels might not be ideal. But other than that, I would think it should work.

Should you not be able to get your microphone working with your guitar link (see previous post), and want to continue trying to get your Intel ICH6 / Conexant cx20551 card talking (or even if you did get it working with your guitar link but want to keep up the good ICH6 fight anyway), I have one other idea.

One thing that I've noticed while searching bug reports is that many people report mislabeled controls. That is, the control that should do something does nothing, but the desired result can be achieved by changing some control that should have nothing to do with it. Possibly you have already experimented with this, but if not it might be worth adjusting various controls while using arecord (with -V option) (or while using mhwaveedit, as suggested by greengeek).

(Oh, I hate to give advice like that -- trial and error -- adjust random controls. Ugh. But when it comes to ALSA, sometimes that is the quickest way to a solution. It shouldn't be this messy, but sometimes it is.)

(On an ASUS EeePC 1005 PE notebook, someone had to set the level of one channel of their stereo microphone to zero in order to get acceptable sound levels. (In alsamixer that would be done with the 'z' or 'c' key.) Perhaps the channels were wired out of phase?)

This section, on the same page as the above, deals with choosing and setting parameters (including "model=", which you have already tried):
Manually Specify Module Parameters

One important document missing from this bibliography is the cx20551 datasheet.

Sometimes I have had good luck digging up datasheets on sound chips, but the cx20551 datasheet eludes me. Today I searched again using its alias (former name?): Conexant 5047, but came up empty-handed again. It is hard to guess how everything connects inside your sound chip -- and what control ALSA might be ignoring -- without a nice block diagram to look at.

Anyway, sorry that I am not able to give you more specific advice. Of course, one of the frustrating things about troubleshooting sound problems is that there are so many different sound cards, but I only own three. So I'm limited to suggesting things to try, rather than giving you a tested solution.

Whoa, if I can't solve my problem I'm sure the information you're providing will help other people..

I tried changing the model paramater in alsa.conf but still nothing, time to give up...

So then I plugged the usb preamp and the guitar again. With jack on I can just connect input from usb to output from the card and hear the guitar. But without Jack it's silence again. Arecord -l gives this:

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